We’re having another lovely, mild day with sunny skies. A perfect day to get more done outside!

My main goal for the day was to finally build the third low raised bed box and set it up.

The ground is starting to freeze, though, so I couldn’t make quite as deep a “foundation” as with the other beds. It should be all right, though.

This is as much as going to be done with it, for now. Things are supposed to get warmer of the weekend, so I might get a chance to bury stuff from the compost pile down the middle, then top it up for the winter.

While I was building the bed, my younger daughter started working on beds in the old kitchen garden.

Beds that were more shaded than other areas.

Beds that were more frozen than not!

Alas, it was too much for our garden fork; one of the few useable tools we found that hadn’t been “disappeared” while the place was empty. It had a tendency to bend in that spot, and when my daughter tried to straighten it, it broke! The poor thing felt so bad.

The old kitchen garden got left for warmer days, and my daughter moved on to clean up the remaining bed at the chain link fence. The chicken wire protecting the cucamelons and gourds had to be removed, the plants pulled, and the soil moved to prepare for the block planters.

The cucamelons did not to well in our drought. The plants grew, there were many, many flowers, with teeny little fruit, but very few of them ever matured. Very likely, they just didn’t get polinated.

As my daughter dug the area up, however, she discovered they did much better below the soil!

Cucamelons produce tubers. I’d read that, in colder climates like ours, they can be dug up, put in a pot of soil and overwintered indoors, then transplanted in the spring. I tried that last year, but the tubers just disappeared in the soil. They, however, were nowhere near as big and thick as these ones!

My daughter set aside the biggest ones, and we will try overwintering them. Maybe at this size, they will have a better chance of surviving to be transplanted.

When my daughter was done cleaning out the bed, she headed inside and I continued working on it.

We had four of these chimney blocks waiting. My daughter had already moved the soil, and I just needed to level it for the blocks.

I found more cucamelon tubers in the process!

I ended up moving the blocks a little bit further away from the fence, so that when we bring up the remaining blocks and lay them down, the fence post won’t be in the way. I put leaf litter in the bottoms of the blocks before filling with the soil, since there is so much of it handy.

It was around this time that I could hear the sound of a utility vehicle nearby, so I headed over. The wife of the couple renting the property had come over to check the electric fence. I have spoken and messaged with her quite a few times, but this is the first time I met her in person! She brought their little daughter along, too, and she was a great help with holding the wire for Mom. It did take quite a while to find one of the ends; it must have gotten caught on a cow’s leg when it got spooked. Not only was it well away from the fence, but a couple of the support poles were pulled right out of the ground!

There was just enough slack that she could twist the wires back together, then we went around to another section where she said she had found a cow had gotten through, in a very unusual spot. She agreed with me, that something must have spooked the cows into going through areas they normally don’t.

While we were walking around, the cows were intensely curious about us humans – and looking for another grain treat!

Just look at those adorable faces!!

Unfortunately, they were a bit TOO interested in Tiny Human, who was starting to get scared. With just cause. Cows may look docile, but they can be aggressive and dangerous to an adult, never mind a wee one. Tiny Human was much more comfortable being carried by Mom!

I took the opportunity to tell her about where we are looking to put a fence through the old hay yard, so we can plant trees for a wind break against the south winds. She let me know that they will likely take out the old fences completely, and put in new, because of the cows getting through so often. We also talked about redoing the fencing around the septic field, so we can still access it from our side, rather than filling in those gaps the cows got through this time. She said she would pass on the things I brought up, and hopefully her husband will soon be able to find the time to come over and we can do a more thorough walk about and discuss it in more detail. They are such good renters. With all our long term plans, I don’t want to be doing anything to make it more difficult for them. That’s part of why I wanted to make sure they knew about where I want to add the fence and plant a windbreak, since it takes away some of the land the cows graze in.

So, all in all, it turned out to be a very productive day, on several levels. 🙂

The only down side, is we how have to replace a garden fork. 😀

The Re-Farmer